How To Start Living A Minimalist Lifestyle

Step One: Decluttering

Owning less stuff means having more time for the most important aspects of our lives, and even feeling more comfortable in our own home. Take some time to declutter your living area. Focus on keeping things that you value deeply, and toss things that you don’t need or use. Giving yourself time will ensure that you are intentional about what you keep and what you discard.

You can complete the decluttering process in steps by getting rid of anything that you know you no longer use. Take a week or two to live without those things, and notice if the things you’ve kept are serving you. Then after that try getting rid of a couple more things especially things you haven’t used in over 6 months. Be sure to not go overboard! You don’t have to live in an empty box or get rid of things you truly find valuable.

Step Two: Mindfulness

Minimalists live intentionally. If there is something in your life that you don’t love, change it! Think about what your ideal life looks like, and then work toward that. Cutting out the things that aren’t serving you are the first step to creating the life that you want. An exercise that really helps is to write down what an ideal day would look like for you in five years time. Then work toward that goal.

Step Three: Relationships

Going minimalist to me meant that I was spending time with only the people I wanted to spend time with. Though I have a lot of friends, only a few of them are people who motivate and inspire me to grow and learn. These few people ignite my creativity and spending time with them is incredibly valuable to me. To me, becoming minimalist meant focusing my social time on people who lifted me up. This way, I was maximizing my social time, and also maximizing the amount of time that I had to focus on things that I wanted to work on.

Step Four: Time

Instead of RSVP’ing “yes” to everything you’re invited to, take some time to think about whether it’s something that you are excited about attending. Be intentional with how you spend your time. Start doing whatever you felt like doing. Try hiking, learn photography, take a nap or spend more time with my family. You’ll feel so much more fulfilled and happy when you scheduled your time according to what you wanted.

Step Five: Saving

A huge part of minimalism is creating financial freedom. Creating a savings account and contributing to it regularly will help you build a little nest egg to quit your day job, build a tiny house, or start traveling. Try setting up an automatic transfer, so that you can save without even trying. Think about cutting out unnecessary expenses and subscriptions that you don’t use to save even more.

When I took the journey to minimalism, I set up an automatic transfer for $100 per week to be sent to my savings account on the day I got paid. This helped me save my first $1000 pretty quickly. Once I got more into minimalism, that amount grew, until I was transferring about 60-70% of my paycheck into my savings. Simple living really pays off!

Minimalism will change your life in ways you’d never think was possible. I found passions that I didn’t know I had, I saved a lot of money and attained financial freedom, and I deepened my relationships with family and friends. What could minimalism do for you?